Santa Fe Farmers' Market

Solo in a Crowd

This morning we walked to the Santa Fe Farmers' Market under cool cobalt skies lit by the morning sun, navigating our unsure path between elbow-nudging shoppers glued to their cell phones and tiny women with big Indian earrings scooping up armloads of bagged organic mesclun greens, radishes, bok choy, and glistening spring onions like they were going out of style.

There were plenty of cherries, some beautiful twig furniture, and a kilted soloist playing bagpipes [a woman in a straw gardening hat held her cell phone aloft shouting to her connection, Can you hear it?].

We ignored the seductive displays of freshly baked herbed foccacia, brown sugar-cinnamon smothered muffins, country-style oat breads, and white chocolate chip cookies the size of dessert plates [it's only at times like these I chafe against the limits of living gluten-free] and admired instead the baby goats for sale, some impressive pots of sweet basil, one shopping couple's matching waist-long dreads, and the dexterity of a ten year old girl playing country fiddle.

There were giggling women in orange yoga-wear, and pale white turbaned Sikh's eating bread and homemade jam as they bought organic garlic and bunches of squeaky spinach. The breeze smelled like mint from Mexican baskets brimming with handmade soap, and I overheard a bearded cyclist say, If I don't get a girlfriend by the end of the year, I'm marrying the first woman I date in January.

All this played out to the deft ranchero stylings of a young Mariachi band from the local high school.

We walked back to the casita empty handed, silent, me, mildly overwhelmed by the jostling crowds and ruminating about the intricate diversity of Santa Fe, and the absorbing book I'd just read about the sixties by Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, hyper aware of my introverted nature.